Muse's Falter
by Starry's Light
Summary: Devil Survivor post-game, takes place after the Song of Hope ending. Haru goes to an audition and meets a rough opposition when her audience doesn't really like her songs. Latane (the protagonist) tries to be a good boyfriend, but it's not easy when in the pit of his soul he can feel demons trying to get him to open up the barrier between the demon and human worlds again. Oneshot.


**Wait, is starry writing an SMT devil survivor story  
that isn't about starra and yamato?  
what? no  
this can't be real**

 **So I started Devil Survivor Overclocked over the summer and I must say it is a pretty solid game. I've never had a waifu before but 100% I can safely say Yoshino Harusawa is my first waifu holy turd I love her**

 **I dunno if she's Yamato Hotsuin levels of coolness but she is pretty awesome  
(I mean I'm totally biased/head over heels for Yamato Hotsuin though so y'know)**

 **anyways. I'm writing this with my OC character because you know, why not, and his name is Latane, and that sounds really strange and out of nowhere but there's a reason buddy. So Starra was my DS2 character because—because the _joke_ is that I had played the second before the first so, well, Starra's full name is Starra Terr, which is a real bad pun on the word "starter" because it was my starter SMT game or whatever. Latane Terr is a much more subtle pun on "later" but it sounds cool unlike Starra which sounds like a baby's first oc but you know what too late to regret it **

**Starata would've made a cooler name. But no. No, I didn't come up with it back then. Oh well. Moving on.**

 **This is Latane and Haru shippy feels because gersh derg it I love them**

 **I have a cold as I write this. I'm gonna blame every single imperfection in this story on that.**

 **Please enjoy!**

Muse's Falter

She nudged open the door with her shoulder before he had the chance to knock. Her face shone with the light of a dying sun—something he could say he had actually seen before—but she managed a bitter grin despite herself. She was like that, her red hair a tornado of tangles down past her shoulders, dress not quite falling off but getting there, tongue partially sticking out of her lip, eyes unfocused.

"Oh, hey," she started. Snagged his hand and pulled it around her, dragged him into her dinky old apartment, a routine.

He stayed quiet. He was good at being quiet, which usually worked out fine, but then she stayed quiet too. Her hand, cold, usually cold but lifeless in his grip. Her fingers caressed the walls as she passed them by, patched photographs and old posters she'd taped up leaving some form of recognition—of Haru—within the tightly-knit box of a home. Nothing sustained and she kept going.

Latane, his voice quietly overpowering, spoke into the abyss. "So how did it go?"

Haru paused, a lapse between what her heart told her to say and what her mind shut down. "Hah. It went fine, I guess." Her tongue darted out, as if to catch what she'd almost added, and her reluctance lingered in the air.

He took her hand and squeezed it, her pale fingers trembling within his tighter grip. Cold. Always cold. While she stood there staring up at him he led her hand to his lips.

"Do you want to tell me?"

Her lip puckered. "It's creepy, the way you..." She stabbed a finger towards him, but by the time her free hand reached him she let it fall to his collarbone, nestled into the warmth between his neck and his shoulder. "You have this..." Her glowing yellow gaze lowered. " _Dan_ gerous—"

"Smell. I know."

They chuckled, voices intermingling, hers sharp and soft, his a pronounced little purr.

Her hand flitted upward, curled around his cobalt hair. "Hmmp. It was..." She drew off, exhaled slowly, as if she'd breathed in something she couldn't quite comprehend.

She let go, hands falling to her sides. Turned around, sauntered over to the small living area that felt even smaller what with the massive scruffy couch that hugged one of the corners. It was all worn out, and stuffing peeked from holes in the tattered linen—vermilion. Haru loved vermilion. Patting the spot next to her, she scooted over and he sat closer than required.

Haru let her head fall, leaning into him. Her hair scoured her expression, rendering it a vague shadow. "It was okay. I showed them my lyrics, tried to sing it right..." Arms tightened around her chest, head falling further. "I mean, it was... it was _fine_ , that's it, it was fine. They were like, o _kay_ , good, but they wanted me to fix the outro and get rid of some of the chorus, change up the beat a little, spike it. I don't know. I mean, I _mean_ , yeah, it's not perfect, nobody's perfect, whatever."

He let his eyes touch the ground. Old, scuffed carpeting blanketed their feet. "I thought it was really good," he murmured. Moved his head by her ear. "I liked it a lot, Yosh. I thought you really outdid yourself. The part with the—"

"Hah, yeah, I liked that too." She imitated little fireworks with her hands. "You could say our little bastard of a buddy _Belial_ inspired the..."

"I could hear it." He let a hand rest by her waist. "You know I could. I told you." Small smile. "A lot."

"I guess it's just..." Haru pulled up her legs and folded her arms around them. She wouldn't glance anywhere other than her knees. "I dunno. Aya always liked my stuff. Thought I had great potential. She never...

Haru closed her eyes, head against Latane's. "She never went, like, _this is bad, just scrap it_. She really really liked my stuff. All of it. What _I_ had to say, not..." She screwed her lip, muttered, "I feel like I really... paint my presence, _my_ vibes, all over the song. And then... them saying, no, it's not enough, it's like _I'm_ not enough, and I _know_ they're just a new band but it's not the _same_ and I _want_ it to be but it's, but..."

She had started to cry.

Crimson flashed along the edges of his vision.

Latane raised his head, just once, and he saw it again.

The sun, a pitted red shape in the sky, a bloodied shapeless hand-print. The claws of creatures incomprehensible to the naked eye scratching desperately their way through the barrier, ugly, misshapen faces leering down upon him, shouting into the core of his soul the words that he still could not fit the right stopper for. The ones—The ones that told him to reopen it, to unleash it—just once, one tiny demon, and _then—_

He gripped Haru's arm. Exhaled slowly. She was so cold. "I didn't want to tell you this, but..." Still didn't want to. Felt kind of like he had to. "I, ah... It's about Aya."

"A..ya..?" she murmured.

"Yeah. I saw... when you were singing, and Atsuro was at that piano in the sky, and we were all fighting Babel, I... there was this moment where I'd left the human world and my spirit—I could see them, feel them, the demons. So many. All of them, so...

He couldn't hold onto his voice, the conviction of it aching in his throat; his words had become smoke, a slowly burning flame. He clutched Haru closer and kept his eyes shut as the vision faded into the clouds out the window, the _yellow_ sun, the _blue_ horizon stretching secure around the earth, the _human_ earth. "It was Hell, I guess. I don't really know. She was there, though, with them. Surrounded by them. They... loved her, Aya. Actually, Frosty—you remember the giant black frost?—he was there too. They were... all very nice to her, treated her with... reverence, like... a queen."

"Why didn't you tell me..." She tried to shout it, or something, but it came out a strangled ghastly sentence. "Why didn't... _Aya,_ and you saw..."

Should he have told her? What if she... "I was worried about you. You've been stuck thinking about her for so long, and only now have you started to... But you're still... _stuck._ On her."

"Hah." She raised her head finally, her gaze shimmering with tears, her cheeks flushed. "You're damn right I am. She was a _sister_ to me, she gave my life a meaning that... And you _knew_ she was still there? You could see her?

But the more she spoke, the quieter she grew, until she stared, her face hollow, a painting of stained glass. She breathed again, chest trembling. "Dammit, Latane. Always trying to... do what you think is best for me." Inhaled, exhaled, until she grabbed his hands and shook them fitfully. "I hate thinking about this. There's nothing we can do for her, is there. For all I know she's not even the same Aya. Some... fucking demon could've pranked you, even."

She didn't address the possibility that Latane had fed her a lie.

She didn't need to.

"Sorry, now I'm all mopey on you again." She pouted, and life bloomed around her cheeks, the color returning to her face. Wiped under her eyes at the stubborn tear-splotches. "I hate getting mopey on you. You're already mopey-looking enough, you lanky blue-haired sob." Her hands shifted, grasping at his black sweater. "You literally wear this every day! What are you, goth?"

"I am not," he muttered, but she wasn't finished—

"Your room is so _bland_ , too! Latane! So much black! Can you not even try to find yourself a happy place?" Then she broke into laughter, the glass laced about her expression shattering into a sparkling warmth. She threw her arms around him and he fell into the couch.

"What?" he spoke into her hair, unable to move. "Are you telling me to take lessons from you? I never thought you the _pastel_ type but it seems it's all you can do to buy every little thing..."

They settled.

She sighed, curling up into him, her head under his chin. "Well thanks for trying, anyways."

"Of course." He pressed his forehead to hers and murmured, "You're the most important person in my life, you know that?"

" _Hah_!" she rolled her eyes. "That's a real hoot. And here I am, babbling about Aya..."

"I don't care. You still are."

He tucked her closer to him and tried to not focus on the demons hovering at the edges of his vision, on wondering where he would have been if not for Yoshino Harusawa, the woman who sung her way into his heart and every last demon out of Tokyo with no less than a single note. One that carried him even still, further and further away from the creatures that lurked within his soul, waiting for their king to return, knowing all the while that if he did the world would split back open again and angels would smite them all somewhere even deeper than the depths of Hell...

Slowly his gaze settled upon the tattoo across his wrist, a tiny, spiked crown with the cursive word _Bel_ written under it.

Closed his eyes.

He didn't let go of his girlfriend for a very long time.


End file.
